The rise of GLP-1 & thin culture is ‘really disheartening’

Ashley Graham covers the latest issue of Marie Claire, the Motherhood Issue. It’s been a minute since I’ve read an interview with Ashley, and I don’t think I’ve read anything from her since GLP-1s took over Hollywood and the larger American culture. Ashley became famous in a unique moment of body-positivity and body-inclusivity. Ashley was one of the “faces” of that movement, and she profited enormously from being a plus-sized model and all-around personality. Nowadays, she’s more lowkey – she’s the mother of three sons, and the world she helped build around the 2010s seems so far away. Ashley spoke about that and more with Marie Claire, including some TMI about childbirth and motherhood which really grossed me out. Some highlights:

Unmedicated labor: “There’s nothing gorgeous about it. It’s the worst pain you’ll ever feel in your life. When it starts coming, it doesn’t get any better; it gets worse. Your mindset going into the day is really the majority of it. If you tell yourself you can do it, you can do it…All these women did it before. Your sister did it, your mother did it, your aunties did it. You’re gonna be fine…that was the mentality I had.”

She doesn’t want her sons online: “There’s just some things to me that are so sacred. We live in such an oversharing world…I feel like I’ve shared a lot of my life with so many people, [and] there’s three little things that I don’t want to share and they’re called Isaac, Roman, and Malachi.” She went “full throttle” on social media when her career began, but she says the world, or at least the scary realities she now pays attention to, has changed since—AI; online predators who target kids or steal identities. So she stands her ground no matter how much Isaac craves the spotlight. When he grows up he wants to be a chef with a “menuless restaurant” and be on Broadway; a career inspired after seeing his mom star as Roxie Hart in Chicago in 2025. “He’s the one that’s like on the fireplace mantle with the microphone like giving us the whole performance,” she says. “His favorite is anything from Aladdin.”

Her body after two pregnancies: “I’m living in a different body and it’s been hard to get to know her. I can’t say that I can look in the mirror and be like, ‘I love you.’ It’s not that for me. It’s that, Wow, I made some children. I was as fit as I could be in 2019 when I got pregnant…I’m still trying to get to that, but I’ve had to get over it in my head that I’ll look like I did in my late 20s, early 30s. She’s gone. Let’s focus on the new girl. That has been like the last four years of my conversation in my head.”

The era of GLP-1s and the return of thinnification culture: “It’s really disheartening. There was a pendulum that swung that was so body acceptance, positivity, everybody be who they want to be. And now it’s going back this whole opposite way that feels like a smack in the face to the women who have felt like they’ve had a voice.” Still, Graham resists the urge to consider it a total backslide. In her nearly three decades in the industry, she says she’s “seen more movement for plus-size women than some people give the whole industry credit for.” And fashion, she adds, has always been trend obsessed: “It goes with the times—and GLP-1s are a time…I know that there are and there’s gonna still be women who are considered plus size forever. This drug isn’t going to wipe out a whole statistic of women.”

The plus-sized community is still here: “Why would I stop now and why would I get angry about the work I’ve done?…I put my head down and I focus on the women we’ve built the community with…. There’s so many [plus size influencers and creators]…they’re all over the place with their sizes and their proportions and how they look and how they’re relatable. And to me, that’s the coolest part about all of this. Seeing that these girls, who were raised on social media at such a young age are now coming in and they have a platform to say to the younger generation, ‘Be yourself, be who you want to be. If you have cellulite, who cares?’”

[From Marie Claire]

She’s both right and wrong – plus-sized women will always exist, curvy women will always exist, there will always be women who struggle with their weight and struggle with body image. Those women aren’t going away, but those women are not going to be platformed, visible and culturally embraced in the same way they were a decade ago. I think people should do what they want as far GLP-1s, and god knows, those drugs have been a literal lifesaver for many people. But yeah… the culture around body inclusivity has changed significantly in just a short time. Ashley clearly thinks it’s a phase and that at some point, the GLP-1 Era will be over. I’m not so sure.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Marie Claire.